


The Dirt Unswept

by Hatterized



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Demon Deals, Exhibitionism, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, demon negan, open ended if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 00:32:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatterized/pseuds/Hatterized
Summary: Rick Grimes has lost his wife and unborn daughter in a tragic accident, and with his son's life hanging in the balance, he's willing to do anything to save him. Even sacrifice himself.Demon!Negan AU.





	The Dirt Unswept

It’s been two days since the accident. Two days since he received that ill-fated call at three-forty-six p.m. with the clinical, rehearsed-sounding voice telling him “Mr. Grimes, I regret to inform you that-”

His wife. His unborn child. Unborn _daughter_ , as he had found out after. After Lori had begun seizing, her body battered beyond repair, after she had slipped away on the bloodstained hospital sheets. He hadn’t been there for that, though. He’d been too late to see it, too late to say goodbye, not that she would have heard him.

“Did all we could for her. For the child,” the doctors had informed him regretfully. He had stormed in, not even remembering the drive there. For all he knew, he’d been speeding, flying down I-75 at ninety-something-miles-per-hour in that way that he always berated people for.

“-Tried to save the baby, after she was gone. Emergency cesarean. She didn’t make it.”

_She_.

A little girl. At six months, her odds had been slim, stacked against her.

“Had her for a few minutes, but she- she sustained too many injuries from the crash.”

His baby girl’s life had lasted a whole four minutes, and he hadn’t been there to see that, either.

He hadn’t been there, but that didn’t stop him from seeing it in his head. It swam behind his eyes every time he dared to close them- Lori, her long, dark hair matted with blood, because there had certainly been blood. By the time he'd arrived, it had been drying, caking around his wife's wounds like rust.

She’d gone through the windshield.

Her swollen belly was sliced open, like it had been with Carl. He’d seen _that_ , thirteen years ago, opted to stay in the room with her during the birth. He’d been shaking then, sweating under his rubber gloves and protective hair cap. Praying silently- or possibly aloud- to a god that he wasn’t sure he believed in to keep watch over his wife and son.

He was on his knees, but he certainly wasn’t praying to that god now. He'd done a lot of that in the past two days, but it seemed that one miracle was all Rick was going to get out of the man upstairs.

_“-Your son…I’ll be blunt with you, Mr. Grimes, it doesn’t look good. Head trauma, severe blood loss, nothing we could do about his right eye…we induced a coma, hoped it would relieve some of the swelling to his brain, but his odds are-”_

He can’t think about the odds, but it’s _all_ he thinks about. The last shred of his family, his _life_ , hanging in the balance while he sits at home hunched over his dining table, lighting waxy black candles around the scrawled instriptions he’d drawn onto the wood in charcoal.

It’s not a _good_ idea, but it’s the only one he has left. His fingers are a smudgy, chalky gray-black.

He doesn’t feel anything, not the cold kiss of steel against his forearm or the bite of the blade when he drags it across his skin. Droplets well up, beading crimson that looks nearly black in the low light. He watches, fascinated, as they roll down his arm, drip onto the sigil and _hiss,_ sizzling like they’d met heated metal and not cheap coffee-stained cedar.

The candles flicker for a moment before blazing up, burning bright and washing out his vision. For the briefest moment, he feels something akin to fear. The feeling of something, _anything_ other than the gut-level agony he’d been ensnared in for the past two days, is almost thrilling.

The candles were unscented- or so they’d said on the packaging- but something strong permeates through the room despite it, thick and sulfurous, and it chokes him, eyes watering. There’s smoke- too much smoke, really _a lot_ of smoke, and he thinks, _I’m going to die here_.

The thought is oddly comforting to him. His own life is ash without Carl’s, Lori’s. They’d never settled on a name for the baby, he thinks brokenly. She’ll be buried in an unmarked grave…they were going to let Carl choose, but they hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him before-

All coherent thought flees Rick’s mind when he sees it, rising out of the thick smog like the devil himself.

_Wouldn’t that be funny_ , the thinks suddenly, _if I got the man in charge. Would that be like calling a help line and getting the manager…?_

The thought almost sends him into a spell of manic laughter that he has to choke on, and he takes it as a sign that he may be cracking, losing his mind.

_Yeah, because this in itself wasn’t enough._

He sees the eyes first- dark, fathomless. A glittering obsidian black that swallows him whole. When he holds the smoldering gaze, he feels like he’s looking directly into the depths of hell itself. He’s teetering on the brink, waiting to be drawn over the edge.

The demon’s voice is the push.

“I’m Negan,” the voice slides over Rick like a physical touch, chilling him down to the bone. “Who has summoned me?”

Surely the broken, lifeless voice that answers isn’t Rick’s own? “R-Rick. Rick Grimes.”

“For what fucking purpose have you summoned me, _Rick Grimes?”_ The voice is deep, masculine, rumbling through the smoke-clouded room like a roll of thunder even as he mocks him. He’s not so much a demon as he is a storm, and Rick wonders if he’s going to be smote just for standing in his presence.

“My- my son. _Carl_ ,” He starts, and he can’t even say the boy’s name without it burning his tongue. “He’s dying. In the hospital, he was in an accident with my wife- my- my daughter…” He swallows and swallows against a lump that never leaves his throat. “They don’t think he’s gonna make it.”

The demon- _Negan’s_ \- face doesn’t change, hard and impassive. “What’s your offer?”

Rick’s got nothing left to withhold, nothing he’s unwilling to part with. “What’s your price?”

Negan rumbles again, and if he was a man, Rick would think it was with laughter. “Same deal I offer everyone, Rick.” The sound of his name on the demon’s tongue is jarring, stirring. “A life for a life.”

“You want me to kill someone?” The acceptance, the _nonchalance_  in his voice should sicken him.

“Would you?” The demon’s tone is nearly bored. “Actually, fucking scratch that. _Could_ you?”

“I’ve done it before,” Rick meets his gaze, unwavering. “I’ll do it again.”

Something flickers on his face then, something like shock, but it’s gone in an instant. “Well, too fucking bad for you, killer, because that’s not what I’m askin’ you for.”

“Then what-”

“Your life for his.”

Rick closes his eyes, breathes deep. He feels hot tears prickle against his eyelids, and the demon _laughs_.

“Aw, what’s wrong, papa bear? You scared to die? You gonna let your kid bite the big one while you kick back with your feet up? You’re willing to kill for him, but not willing to die? And here I thought you were gonna be the fucking martyr type.”

The accusation- that he values Carl’s life less than his own- _burns_  him. “It’s not about _me_ ,” he spits, disgusted, “Carl’s thirteen, his mother is dead, we don't have any other family that can take him. He’ll wake up orphaned, handicapped, _alone_ -”

“Better than never waking up at all, right?” Negan jeers, his words fingers digging into the messy pulp of an open wound. Rick flinche, dropping his gaze to the inky wax dripping down onto his coffee table.

“Please…I’ll do anything, just…just let me stay with him. He doesn’t have anyone else.”

“That’s the deal, killer. Flat rate, across the board. You can fucking take it or leave it, I really don’t give a shit either way, but I think it’s time you make a fucking _decision_ , don’t you?”

Rick squeezes his eyes closed, tears dripping. “What if- what if I…can I just stay with him for a while? Until he’s able to be on his own. Five years,” he pleads, “He’ll be eighteen then, off to college, on his own. He’ll be an adult, he won’t need me anymore, if you can just let me stay with him until then-”

“That’s not how this fucking _works_ , Rick.” Rick feels himself being jerked to his feet by a bruising grip, hands digging into the flesh of his sides like they're trying to dig down to the muscle and bone. “See, you don’t get to fucking bargain with me. You don’t have anything to give me, you get that? It’s your life, right now, or nothing at all.”

Rick’s fingers fumble up to grip at the demon’s wrists, gasping in shock when the skin-on-skin contact burns him, but not pulling away. “Anything,” Rick hisses through the sting of it. “There’s got to be something. Five years with my boy.”

Up close like this, breathing directly into Negan’s face, Rick can see him clearly for the first time. He isn’t what Rick expected in a demon. He smiles a smile that’s all teeth and hunger, unnaturally white and sharp. The skin of his forearms is heavily marked in jagged symbols that make Rick feel uneasy when he looks at them for too long, and his hands are smudged with ashy black up to his wrists, like he’s been handling coal. Rick’s own charcoal-smudged fingers look like a weak imitation of the coloring.

He’s unexpectedly beautiful. A fallen angel, a _David_ carved of brimstone.

His eyes are flame, licking over Rick’s skin. “You know what?” He purrs, “You’re right. There _is_ something that I want from you, Rick.”

Rick says it again. _“Anything.”_

“You.” Negan’s hands slide over his hips, Rick’s icy fingers still gripping his wrists. “I want _you_.”

Rick swallows, eyes darting, searching his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I want _you_. You’d be mine after you died. No muss and fucking fuss about where you’re going after you die, because you’d be with me. _Mine_ , forever.” The hands on Rick’s hips tighten, cruel and possessive, and for a shameful second, Rick dares to think about himself.

Damned forever, owned by a demon. The way Negan’s hands rub over him unnerves him, rattles him to his core. There’s no mistaking the look on his face. It’s almost commendable that he can pull such a look off without any expression in his eyes.

His tongue is between his teeth, hungry and waiting.

Rick delivers himself to the mouth of the wolf, a willing sacrifice. “Okay. Five years. And then…then I’m yours.”

Negan’s grip on him falters at that. “You fucking sure about that, killer? I’m talking damnation, I’m talking eternity as my personal fucking bitch-”

He’s either rubbing it in or trying to talk him out of it, and Rick can’t fathom why he would do the latter. “I already said yes. If I’m on a clock here, I’d rather not waste more time on semantics. I’ll take your deal. You get me after I get five years with my son.” He’s not going to let the demon’s jeering shake him. He’s made his choice. “You need something to seal the deal, or are we square here?”

The smile that curls the corners of Negan’s mouth is wicked, sin itself. “Oh, _Rick_. Killer, I most _certainly_ fucking need something to seal the deal.” He has this way of rocking and leaning when he speaks, punctuating his words with his hips. It’s unnerving, this creature who won’t sit still, like he’s ready to pounce on Rick at any given moment. Right now, he’s towering over Rick, crowding him backwards so that his calves bump the couch- fuck, he’d almost forgotten he’s still in his living room for how fogged over everything is. “You know how I said you’re gonna be my bitch? I was not fucking around there, Rick. We, however, _are_ going to be fucking around.”

A chill slides over Rick then, ice in his veins, drying up his throat. He worries his lower lip between his teeth, and Negan’s eyes slide down to his mouth.

He’s jerking Rick forward suddenly, and Rick stumbles up against the firm body and feels himself spun in place, his back flush against the demon’s chest. His breathing hitches, heat crawling up his neck, and when Negan’s hands slide over his hips again, he squeezes his eyes tightly shut, forcing deep breaths.

_Carl, Carl, Carl, do it for Carl-_

“I’m gonna fuck you, Rick.” There are lips at Rick’s ear, the soft _snick_ of teeth against his earlobe. “You’re gonna bend over for me, and you’re going to fucking _take it_. And you know what?”

_Doesn’t mean anything, it’s worth it, it is-_

“You're gonna fucking _like_ it. You ever been _fucked_ before, Rick? I know you’ve fucked, you’ve got a damn kid, after all, but have you ever been truly fucking _fucked_? So hard you feel it in your throat, can taste it on your lips? So good that you can’t fucking think, can’t breathe ‘cept for when you’re taking it _in_ , and it’s forcing noises _out?”_ Hands find the hem of Rick’s untucked shirt, yank roughly. The bottom two buttons pop and scatter, and then the hands are exploring Rick’s belly, burning like coals. “Bet you make some real fucking pretty noises, killer. Would you? Would you fucking whimper for me as I pushed into _here?_ ” One of the hands is on Rick’s ass then, cupping a cheek and squeezing, and Rick knows his face is probably about as hot as Negan’s skin is. He’s not used to being handled so roughly, and the intimate touch from unknown hands is-

“Would you fucking scream for me when I made you come?” He’s being _kneaded_ through the layers of his clothes, and his body is in full flight mode.

_You’re wasting more time. Again._

“Fine. Can we get it over with, then?” Rick bites out, and he’s proud of how even his voice is despite how shaken his insides feel.

The hands on him still, and then withdraw completely. He’s felt hanging in the balance for a long moment, waiting, before he’s being shoved back again.

Negan’s lip is curled back over white teeth, like Rick repulses him. “You’d fucking let me do it, too, wouldn’t you? You fucking-” He exhales heavily into the smoke, stirring it around them. “I was fucking with you, killer. We seal the deal with a fucking kiss. Hope I didn’t get you all _worked up_ ,” he sneers.

Rick stands there, anticipating.

He’s not kind with his kiss, doesn’t hold back. Those teeth aren’t just for show, and Rick feels like he’s being _devoured_. He draws blood, licks it off of Rick’s bruised lips with hunger.

Rick just takes it, not sure if he’s supposed to reciprocate. Apparently not, because Negan pulls back after a minute, lips wet when he says. “Deal’s fucking done. Hope your brat is fucking worth it. He better treat you like a goddamned hero.”

He sounds almost bitter.

“See you a-fucking-round, killer.” The candles blaze up again and then dim so low they fizzle out, and when Rick’s eyes adjust again, Negan is gone. The smoke has vanished with him, and the candles are puddled over and drying wax onto the ruined coffee table.

For a moment, Rick just stares at it, wondering if there was something hallucinogenic in those candles, because there’s no fucking way that any of that just happened, right?

His phone rings suddenly, vibrating loudly with the crooning of Johnny Cash on the kitchen countertop. He catches sight of himself in the hallway mirror on his way to pick it up. Swollen, bitten lips, the bottom two buttons on his shirt missing.

_Jesus._

He picks up the phone, flips it open. “Is this a Mr. Rick Grimes?”

“Yes.” Baited breath.

“Mr. Grimes, I have good news about your son Carl’s condition.”

Not Jesus. Not by a fucking long shot, but Rick never had much luck with him, anyway.

* * *

Carl is in the hospital for another two weeks. His condition is stable, but he’s not in any shape to go home, not just yet. He needs physical therapy even after he’s discharged, to adjust to seeing with just one eye. He’s unsteady on his feet sometimes, bumps into things constantly. The doctors promise him that his depth perception will get better with time and patience. They call his recovery a miracle.

Rick _almost_ finds that funny.

\--

The nights at home, completely alone in the dark of his empty house, unnerve Rick. The shallow dip in Lori’s side of the bed from where the mattress is worn in feels like a sheer drop off of a cliff face.

Rick sleeps on the couch after the first night, and he swears that he sees shadows flickering in the corner of the living room.

\--

Carl isn’t adjusting well to anything- to his eye, to his mom being dead, to Rick being a single parent who’s also grieving his wife and daughter. Rick sees it for what it is when he shouts, when he swears, when he has to nearly be dragged from his bed to go back to school for the first week: he’s grieving. Hell, Rick wishes he could scream and stay in bed the whole day, too. He replaced the old worn-in mattress for a new one and is in the process of wearing a dip right into the middle of it, trying to break his fifteen-year habit of sleeping on the left side.

The only thing that’s getting him through the days is knowing that he still has Carl, and that their time together is limited, so when Carl lashes out at him, it _hurts_.

“I wish _you_ had died instead of mom!”

That’s hurled at Rick a month after Carl gets home, when Rick finally has to cave and ground Carl from his phone for a week. Because he got suspended from school for two days. For fighting another student.

Carl’s said a lot in the last month, but nothing that cruel, and it absolutely guts Rick. He can’t even hide it- his face crumples and he staggers back like he’s been punched. He has to leave- he can’t say anything to that, he just has to close the door to his bedroom and crumple to the floor and cry because his wife is dead and he never got to meet his daughter and his son hates him and he has five years to live until…he doesn’t even know what.

He can’t stop, he can’t fucking _stop crying_ , and it’s all he can do to try to muffle the sound of it in his arms so Carl doesn’t hear how weak he is, how delicate and easily bruised.

“Still think your kid is fucking worth it?”

Rick jolts so hard he slams his head on the wall, swears his heart stops.

There he is, standing a few feet away with his arms casually folded, like his presence in Rick’s bedroom is the most mundane thing in the world.

“What the…what the _hell_ are you doing here, Negan?” The demon looks so smug, like he’s just waiting for Rick to admit that he was right, like Rick’s going to say the he regrets his choice.

“Been watching you,” Negan says nonchalantly, leaning up against the wall. He’s swathed in black, looking like he was dipped in ink. Rick remembers the way his touch burned and wonders if he’ll leave a scorched smudge on the wall when he leaves. “It usually doesn’t take long for people to regret deals like this. Call it a follow-up visit. Just a reminder that you didn’t get a fucking receipt and there are no returns, refunds, or fucking exchanges. Can’t take back a liplock.” He smirks, tongue between his teeth.

“I don’t regret it. Not lookin’ for a refund.” Rick wipes at his face, smearing tears. “He’s just havin’ a hard time is all. He lost his eye. Lost his _mom_.”

“You lost a fuckload more than he did.”

Rick glares. “Do you want me to regret it? You waitin’ on me to beg you to let me out of the deal? Because that’s not gonna happen.”

“It _should_ fucking happen, Rick.” Negan’s lip curls. “You give up somethin’ for someone else, you’ll always come to regret it. People are shitty fucking selfish animals. If you’re not looking out for number one, you’re actively letting people fuck you over.”

His voice is so bitter Rick nearly tastes it on his tongue. “Sorry that’s been your experience,” he says. “I’ll do my best to prove you wrong.”

The bedroom door swings open then, and Carl steps in, looking abashed. “ _Dad_ ,” he croaks, kneeling down next to Rick, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean- I don’t wish that you were-”

Rick draws him into his arms, the wound already mended. “It’s okay, Carl. It is. I know you didn’t.”

Negan fades away into smoke again. No smudge of ash on the wall, but that night Rick falls asleep staring at where it _would_ have been.

\--

Rick is almost excited as Carl for summer to come. All he wants is to spend time, just the two of them, exploring the world while he’s still around to appreciate it. He never considered himself much of a world traveler, always content with where he was, always thinking about that proverbial _someday_ down the line where he and Lori and Carl would have roadtrips and adventures and fond family memories. Nothing like knowing exactly when you’re going to kick the bucket to give you a little lust for life.

Carl goes, but it’s not how he pictured, not the wonderstruck father-son bonding he’d built it up to be in his head. They have fun, sure, but it’s pretty obvious that Carl would rather be at home playing video games and eating cheap pizza with his friends than sightseeing with his dad in North Dakota.

The only thing that really gets to Carl on their month-long road trip across the country is when they visit the Grand Canyon. The only time his phone leaves his pocket the whole time they’re there is to snap pictures, his blue eyes wide and awed, and Rick thinks, _finally, finally, this is exactly what I wanted, this is what I wanted to share with him._

“Mom always wanted to come here,” Carl whispers when the sun starts to set, squeezing Rick’s hand like he’s a little kid again.

Rick shakes, everything blurred over. “I know.”

\--

He tries not to be hurt when Carl is visibly elated to be home again. He tries even harder the next day when he overhears Carl’s and his friend Enid talking over the sounds of Call of Duty.

_“Why were you guys gone so long?”_

_“He wanted to bond with me, I guess. Said we should see the world together. It was alright, some of it was fun, but it’s like…that’s the kind of stuff you do when you’re old. Go see Mount Rushmore and shit. I think he was kind of bummed that I didn’t get more into it. Maybe I’ll take him back when I’m his age, you know? When we’ll both like it.”_

Rick sobs big, heaving bellows into his pillow because he’ll never get to see Carl when he’s his age. He feels pathetic, so fucking fragile. He briefly wonders if he should go talk to someone, a counselor...but what's the point if he can't tell them everything? And he can't- if he starts spewing things about demons and deals from hell, he's going to get himself drugged up and institutionalized.

“I told you, Rick. The people that make these kinds of deals- they deserve better than the people they make them for.”

Rick glares over his soaked pillow, glances over to the spot on the wall that he’s memorized, except Negan’s not there. He’s lounging like a long-limbed cat atop Rick’s dresser, and Rick groans because now he’s going to spend the next month staring over at that spot expecting to see the glittering of dark eyes staring back at him. “Why do you only ever show up when I’m crying?” He guesses that the demon has a thing for weakness- preys on it, smells it like blood in the water.

There’s a flash of white teeth. “You’re fucking pretty when you cry.”

Rick elects to ignore Negan’s attempts at mocking him. “Why are you always telling me that people aren’t worth making these deals for?”

“Because they aren’t. I’ve been around the bend a time or two, killer. I’ve seen it all. Men trading away the years of their lives for women who don’t give them the time of day. Women giving up everything for men who leave them to chase some hot new piece of ass. Parents who sacrifice everything for children who leave them in the dust, don’t even write.” The last one is pointed, meant to inflict pain, but Rick’s not having it.

“Don’t fucking come here anymore if you’re just going to tell me I shouldn’t have saved my son. Don’t you come into my house and tell me he didn’t deserve to be saved because he’s a normal teenager who would rather hang out with his girlfriend than his dad. I didn’t do this so he would _owe_ me somethin’. I did it because I love him. I’m his father. He’s not some cheatin’ spouse, he’s my _son_. He doesn’t have to worship the ground I walk on. He just has to be here.”

He half-expects to find himself engulfed in flames at that very moment.

“You’re right, Rick,” Negan says after a pregnant pause. “You’re fucking right.”

The demon vanishes from Rick’s bedroom, dissolving away into smoke, and somehow, the admission that Rick was right is still the most shocking thing that he’s ever done.

\--

Rick’s not sure when he started getting used to Negan’s occasional drop-ins. He should have minded, he realized, that a _demon_ was making random house calls just for quick chats.

Somehow, he didn’t. Maybe it was because after that second time, he had dropped the whole _“your kid deserved to die”_ spiel.

“You got nothin’ better to do than to drop by and watch me cook dinner?” Rick askes him one evening in the middle of sautéing chicken. Negan leans against the counter beside him, arms crossed. He never seems to stand fully upright, always either leaning or sitting atop Rick’s furniture in a way that would have been precarious if he was an actual person. “Seems like a boring way to spend your evening, but what do I know? How do you usually spend your time, anyway? Guess I probably oughta ask that, since we’ll be spendin’ a lot of time together.”

He tries to make it into a joke, speak lightly of it. The future. With Negan. He's pretty sure he’ll lose his damn mind if he doesn't.

“I do all kinds of shit, Rick,” He smirks, and Rick notes, not for the first time, that he can never tell when Negan is being genuine. If he ever is. It's hard for smiles or smirks to look honest without any kind of emotion behind his eyes. “You worried? You wonderin’ what you’re gonna be doing down there? Well, I can tell you right now, killer, it’s not gonna be fucking peaches and cream. You’re gonna be my bitch in _every_ fucking sense of the word, baby.” His voice is low, a filthy threat, and Rick tries not to show how it's affecting him, tries to still the tremor in his hands. He ignores him, nodding curtly, eyes on the pan.

Negan isn’t having that, oh no.

Slim-fingered hands thread into Rick’s hair and _yank_ , so hard that he loses his balance and sends soy sauce splattering everywhere. “You wanna fucking be like that, Ricky boy? Huh? You wanna act like you’re not fucking scared?” He laughs in Rick’s ear, a cruel hiss. “You’re gonna be pissing your fucking pants when it’s time to go. Gonna be begging me for your life, gonna wish you’d let your cyclops boy fucking die in that hospital bed with his mama. I’m gonna take you the fuck _apart_ , Rick. I’m gonna break you and then reamake you and break you all over again, just to see the tears in those sad baby blues. By the time I’m done with you, you won’t know who you are, won’t remember that you used to be a fucking person. You won’t remember your goddamn kid. You’d sell his life just as easily as you sold your own. You’d skin him alive if I told you to do it.”

Rick swallows, throat bobbing.

“You’ll be a goddamned _monster_.”

“Dad?”

Rick’s head jerks to the side, Negan’s fingers still tangled in his hair and tugging painfully at the roots. Carl’s eye darts from Rick’s undoubtedly strange posture to the sauce spilling all over the floor to the rapidly searing chicken on the stove. “You okay?”

The hand in his hair is gone, and Rick straightens, shaking. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright, Carl. Sorry. Got lost in thought, I guess.”

“Alright…” Carl glances at the pan again, wrinkling his nose. “I think that…whatever that was…is burning.”

Yeah, that seems about right. “You wanna order takeout? Not pizza this time, please.”

\--

Negan doesn’t come back for another three months after that. Rick _almost_ broke the habit of glancing around his bedroom for him, too.

Almost.

“It’s been a year.”

Rick already knows. He has the date seared into his brain, burning red behind his eyelids when he closes them. “Been a while since I’ve seen you.” He wonders why it isn’t more unnerving, this creature materializing in his room at half past midnight, sitting at the foot of his bed. He very nearly blends in with the pitch-black room, except that his eyes glint like a cat’s in the dark.

Negan doesn’t talk, doesn’t say a word, just silently crawls up the bed and lays beside Rick, forcing him to scoot over onto the right side. This- this is unnerving, the silence hanging heavy between them.

“I lied,” Negan says simply. “About the deal.”

Rick can only squeeze his eyes shut and pray that Negan’s not saying what he thinks he’s saying.

“I can’t fucking…keep you. Make you my bitch, or whatever the shit I said. I lied. You’re not gonna be mine. You’re just going to die.”

It goes unsaid, the end of his sentence: _like your kid should have_. Rick finds himself appreciating the restraint. He exhales, feeling like he’s really able to _breathe_ for the first time in a year.

“Why?” is all he asks, because he can’t think to say anything else.

“Why’d I lie? Or why’d I let you get such a sweet fuckin’ deal with me?”

“Yes.”

Negan laughs at that, a self-depreciating sound. “Because I fucking like you, killer.”

It’s only later that Rick understands that he’d been answering both questions.

* * *

Rick finds himself looking through old photo albums a lot. He first pulled them out one particularly bad night when he’d woken up, crying and shaking from a nightmare about Lori, sweat soaking all the way through his shirt and into the sheets.

He thumbs through the pages after Carl goes to sleep, taking his time, going slow, savoring. He has his favorites- His and Lori’s wedding day, pictures of Carl when he was in kindergarten, all gappy teeth and neatly trimmed hair. He’s been growing it out since the accident, childishly refusing to go to a barber. Rick tries to trim it up a bit every couple months, but he’s all thumbs and Carl hates it.

Rick does too, sees the way Carl glares at the scissors like they’ve personally offended him and knows why, sees the intent and is terrified that one day, when Carl’s in a particularly bad mood, he’ll say it out loud.

_Mom did it better than that._

The photos of Lori and young Carl are bittersweet, and the tears that cloud his eyes when he flips through them are ones of nostalgia.

Other sections of the book just induce bitterness, the sweetness in the photos long since dissolved, and he passes them by with angry flips of the pages.

Negan notices this. He sits beside Rick on the bed for so many nights, just watching him thumb through the same old pictures again and again.

“Who’s he?” Negan’s long, sooty index finger stops his rapid page turning, and Rick grits his teeth.

“Nobody. He’s nobody.”

“Big ol’ beefy fucker, isn’t he?” Negan muses, still not moving his hand. He cranes his neck to get a better look, all up in Rick’s space. Rick finds it hard to breath when Negan does that, and he does it a _lot_ these days. “Bet he could toss you right over his shoulder, killer. He’s in here a lot. Then he’s not anymore. Why’s that?”

Rick snaps the book shut on Negan’s hand, dumps it unceremoniously off the edge of the bed. “Said he was nobody.” He clicks the lamp off and strips in the dark.

Negan’s still there.

“Were you in love with him or something? You got an ex-boyfriend I should be jealous of, killer?”

Rick falls asleep angry with hollow eyes tracing the rise and fall of his chest.

\--

“His name was Shane,” Rick says around a mouthful of toothpaste. “He’s dead.”

Negan nods from his place in the doorway, watches him spit and rinse. “He the sorry son of a bitch you offed?”

Rick just looks _tired_. His beard is more salt than pepper these days, silver threading all the way up to his temples. He flops into bed, and Negan follows. He’s more dog than demon, Rick thinks wryly.

“Bet he fucking deserved it.” Negan’s voice splits the dark, and Rick sleeps easy.

\--

Carl is gone for two weeks- off to baseball camp for the summer, and Rick _loathes_ being in the house alone.

It’s almost like Negan has a direct line to Rick’s thoughts, because the first night, when Rick’s laying restless and uneasy in bed, he shows up, materializing on the left side of the bed like a specter.

“You seem fucking tense. Are you always like that, or is it just ‘cause I’m here? I swear, every goddamn time I show up, you seem wound up tighter than a priest in a whorehouse.”

“Am I supposed to be relaxed when a demon shows up in my bed?” Rick snaps irritably, and Negan’s eyes darken.

“You tellin’ me you don’t like me bein’ here? Aw, killer, you’re gonna break my goddamn heart.”

“Didn’t know demons had hearts,” Rick quipped, and immediately he knows that he’s gravely misspoken, because Negan’s eyes flare up in that dangerous way they do sometimes, his broad shoulders squaring.

“I used to be a fucking _person_. Just like you,” he sneers, and something about the way he says it sounds like a promise, a warning. It sends chills right down Rick’s spine, and a question lurks in his mind. He wonders if this is a bad time to ask.

“I had a heart.” Negan says it so quietly, his mood shifting so rapidly that it nearly gives Rick whiplash.

It’s a risk, but it always is with Negan. He asks anyway. “What happened to it?”

“She’s dead.” Negan’s voice is ice. “She didn’t fucking deserve it.”

Rick knows how that feels.

There’s another question, one that’s been weighing on him for a long time. “How do you become a demon?” He prays, hopes and prays, that his guess is wrong.

Negan is silent for a minute, face drawn and unreadable. “Any fucking step up seems like a good option when you hit rock bottom,” he says.

Rick knows how that feels, too.

\--

Carl stops questioning Rick's constant and insistent presence eventually. Rick tries- he really does- not to hover, not to intrude too deeply into Carl's life. It's a constant struggle, a balancing act between spending all the time he has left with Carl and letting Carl forge his own path, have a normal childhood. 

There's this awful voice in the back of Rick's head that tells him _The more time you spend just you and him, the worse off he'll be after you go._  

It's that voice that gets him through the nights that Carl spends in his room or hanging out with his friends or when he starts taking weekend trips away with them, leaving Rick more and more alone in the house. 

_It's a good thing_ , he thinks. _It means he's adjusting, that he's happy. You don't want him to depend on you, remember?_

It's strange, how the loneliness makes him feels so tired, but when he lies in bed at night, he feels restless, sleep slipping through his fingers like smoke. 

Negan is there, the proverbial smoke, and Rick breathes him in like he's lungfuls of fresh air instead of pollution. It's a sign of how desperate he is, he knows, that the presence of a demon in his bed, deep black eyes locked onto his, is somehow a comfort. Touch starved and isolated as he is, Rick craves him. 

One night, he reaches out, almost expecting his hand to go straight through Negan and meet the empty bed beneath him. But his fingers meet burning flesh, and Rick leaves it there, stroking over his jawline and cheekbones.

"Careful, killer. I could melt someone as sweet as you."

Rick doesn't pull his hand back. 

The next night, Negan reciprocates. His touch scorches Rick's skin, heat licking over him like an open flame wherever Negan's hands wander. Rick makes noises- breathy, guttural things that he has to stifle into his hand so that Carl won't hear. 

He feels _unmade_. 

\--

Rick gets accustomed to sleeping on the right side of the bed.

\--

Rick doesn’t date- doesn’t even consider it. Why would he get invested in someone- and have someone get invested in him- if he knows he has an expiration date looming over the horizon?

Carl seems to think this is strange. He confronts him about it one day, awkwardly.

“You can date, dad. I know you- I know it doesn’t mean you don’t love mom anymore. I don’t care if you do. You don’t have to stay single forever.”

Rick feels a rush of affection at that- Carl, giving him his blessing in his disjointed teenage way. “Thanks, Carl. I appreciate it. I’ll keep that in mind.”

He’s _frustrated_. To the point where he almost considers asking Carl to help him set up one of those casual dating apps he’s been hearing so much about, but the thought makes him cringe.

He’s never been much of one for casual sex, anyway.

But still. He’s frustrated.

He finds himself with a hand down the front of his boxers a couple nights a week, so it’s no surprise when Negan shows up one evening in the middle of it. And of course he’s not quiet about it.

“Holy fuck, killer! You gonna put on a show for me?” He takes his place on the bed, his grin positively insatiable with hunger as he eyes the tent in the front of Rick’s boxers. Rick’s answering glare is much less impressive when his face is hotly flushed and his fist is still wrapped around his aching cock.

“No,” he grits out, and rolls over onto his side, tugging the covers up around himself so that Negan can’t watch him as he squirms and wriggles and tries to will down his erection.

“Just jack off, Rick. Not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before.”

Rick freezes at that, because the idea that Negan’s been in his room before when he’s done this, watching him as he huffed and moaned and spilled over into his hand, is too much.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, but he’s not about to give Negan that kind of power over him.

When the demon shows up at the foot of his bed three nights later, it’s a different story entirely. Rick meets his eyes when he appears, holds him there while he pushes his boxers down and off.

“Don’t say anything,” he warns, demanding.

Miraculously, Negan listens. Doesn’t say a word as Rick spits and takes his swollen cock in hand, strokes long and smooth up the shaft, thumbs softly at the head, plays with the wetness leaking from him. He props his knees up, slides his other hand down between his thighs to squeeze his balls gently, rolling them in his palm.

_God, that feels good._

He explores lower, two fingers rubbing down the sensitive skin under his sac, his hips bucking up into his fist while Negan watches, tongue wetting his lips. Boldly, Rick lifts the fingers to his mouth, wetting them.

His legs spread further apart on the bed, exposing himself, and Negan’s eyes greedily follow the path of the fingers all the way down _there_.

Rick touches himself, traces the rim before pushing one finger in, knuckle-deep. Negan can’t contain himself then, exhales a sharp “ _fuck”_ that makes Rick lock eyes with him again, chastising.

He waits until Negan is silent again before he picks up the pace, plunging the second finger in and scissoring them, opening himself up. He pumps the digits in and out of himself, hand working in time with the thrusts of his fingers. When he crooks them just right, he lets out a quiet, breathless moan and Negan _growls_.

He doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite a filthy, quite as open and on display, as when he finally comes hard in front of Negan, his cock throbbing in his fist as he spills onto his belly, clenching down around the fingers deep in his ass.

To his credit, Negan doesn’t talk afterword, either. That’s a surprise.

\--

Three years in, Rick finally asks.

“What will happen to me? What I die, I mean. You’re a demon, so will I…got to hell?”

“You didn’t consider that when you offered your life to me, killer? It’s a little fucking late for cold feet. You _do_ remember my return policy, right?”

Yes, Rick remembers. “I didn’t- it wouldn’t have mattered. For Carl to live…it doesn’t matter. I was just curious.”

Negan stares at him, eyebrows raised like he’s stunned. After a long stretch of silence, he speaks. “You’re too fucking good for hell, Rick.”

The way he says it sounds almost like an apology. Rick takes it as confirmation.

* * *

Carl moves into his college dorm a month before his eighteenth birthday. Rick cries, is embarrassing about it, hugging his son- who is now taller than him- to his chest. Carl shuffles, gives him a one-armed hug.

“Dad, it’s fine, _really_ , it’ll be okay. I’ll come home every weekend, I’ll call you every night if you want- just…stop with the waterworks, alright?” He grins good-naturedly, all scruffy facial hair and newly shorn locks. He finally, _finally_ decided to cut his hair before he left, and Rick takes it as a good sign: he’s moving on from the loss of his mother.

He tries not to consider the fact that, in a month’s time, he’ll be grieving a parent all over again.

“I love you, Carl.” He can’t say it enough, can’t stop looking at him like it’s the last time. His son, the last living piece of Lori, grown up into a man. Rick is so proud of him that it _hurts_.

“I love you, Carl,” he whispers into Carl’s hair before he leaves him with one last parting hug. When he steps out of the dorms, he feels like he’s leaving all of the good in himself at the doorstep.

Rick almost starts laughing in the middle of his breakdown on the drive home, because he’s driving down I-75 with a demon in the passenger seat and almost on reflex he has to bite back the impulse to tell Negan to _put on his goddamned seatbelt._

\--

He’s not proud of it, but he starts drinking a good bit after Carl is gone. He doesn’t have anyone- no friends, no family- the few people he’d been close to before the accident he’s long since pushed away in a desperate bid to leave as little of an impact as possible when he dies.

He’s so fucking _lonely_ , and the nights he spends with a bottle of Jack and the photo albums are more bitter than sweet now. The alcohol makes him sad, fills him up until he’s spilling over the brim with tears that a more sober version of himself wouldn’t have shed.

He cries over Carl, for the little boy he used to be before his life was struck by tragedy.

He cries over Lori, the love of his life that he never got to spend his whole life beside.

He cries over his daughter, for all of the birthdays and lost teeth and growing pains and and heartache and _love_ she never got to experience.

When the nights take particularly bad turns, he cries over Shane. Over the brother that he lost, the blood on his hands, the stains that never washed out.

He’s in the middle of puking up the better part of a bottle of whiskey when Negan shows up, leaning on his bathroom sink while Rick’s sweaty forehead rests against the cool porcelain.

“I’m fucking sorry, Rick,” is all he says, and even in his current drunken state, Rick can hear in his voice that he really means it.

\--

Carl’s actual birthday falls on a Monday, so he spends the Sunday beforehand at home with Rick. It all works out so perfectly that Rick is _very nearly_ happy that day. His last day on earth.

He tries not to think about tomorrow, about Carl receiving some call in the middle of one of his classes, much like the one Rick received five years ago.

And then, because things can never be fucking _easy_ , he starts thinking about how there’s nobody but Carl to check on him, nobody else to care when he dies, so it’ll be Carl calling him and not getting an answer. Maybe he’ll think nothing of it, the first time, and Rick’s body will sit in the house for a day or two before Carl gets concerned and actually comes home to find-

He starts hyperventilating, having a full-blown panic attack in front of Carl and his girlfriend, Enid, and has to excuse himself to his bedroom after they cut the cake because _his son is going to come home to find him dead_ and Carl doesn’t deserve any of this.

Negan is there for all of it, the whole damn day, like the grim reaper himself. Rick looks at him and sees an hourglass, the sand nearly all drained into the bottom.

“My wife made a deal like yours,” Negan says suddenly, and Rick’s head snaps up. “I had cancer. She fucking traded her life for mine, literally took my suffering onto herself.” He holds himself rigidly, like he’s cracking as the words leave him and if he lets go, he’ll shatter. “She fucking loved me. She fucking _died_ for me.” He spits the words out, everything about him screaming self-loathing. “I didn’t fucking deserve it. I was fucking _cheating_ on her. The love of my goddamn life, and I-” When he exhales, it’s black as smoke.

“Why are you telling me this?” Rick manages, his words thick with tears.

“I don’t fucking know. I fucking like you, killer. I guess I’m just tryin’ to tell you that I was a shitty fucking guy, and even though I was a piece of shit husband, a piece of shit _person_ , I still fucking wish I could just walk away from you right now. Leave you here with your fuckin’ kid and your bad memories and dead wife and let you just live the rest of your life.”

“But you can’t.” Rick knows better than to hope for a second reprieve.

Negan glares at the floorboards. "I'm fucking _sorry_ , Rick."

\--

Somehow, Rick manages to collect himself. He splashes cold water on his face, breathes deep, and forces himself to walk back downstairs where Carl and Enid are waiting with empty cake plates and concerned looks.

“I’m okay,” he assures them, and he almost believes it, almost feels at peace.

He doesn’t cling to Carl this time- he’s dug so deep into himself that he’s found a hidden well of strength, and he taps it dry. He hugs Enid- a spunky, sweet girl, if a bit mouthy- and makes her promise to take good care of his boy while Carl rolls his one good eye and flushes pink. He pulls Carl in for a hug that he hopes isn’t too full of clinging and desperation, squeezing him tight.

“I love you, Carl. I love you so much. I’m so proud of the man you’ve grown into. Your mother would have been so proud to see how you’ve grown up.” He sniffles, just a little, at that. “I wish you could’ve had the childhood I had. I wish I had somethin’ more profound to say. My father was good like that. But I’m tired, son.” He smiles despite it, love in his eyes. “I love you, Carl. Your mom loved you very much. Never forget that.”

Carl looks embarrassed, but he’s old enough now that his dad getting sentimental on him doesn’t send him into eye rolls and _whatevers_.

“I love you too, dad.”

Rick surprises himself by not crying as he watches them pull out of the driveway.

\--

He should probably be making the most of his last few hours on earth, but he finds himself just sitting on his bed, watching the clock. What more is there to be done, after all?

It’s 11:59, and Negan is nowhere to be seen. Rick wonders if he’ll come for him in person of if he’ll just…slip away when midnight hits.

He closes his eyes, breathes, counts to ten, opens them again.

He swears that he sees shadows flickering in the corner of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> So I went back and forth on the ending a lot- originally, Rick was going to die but be at peace with it, but as I got to the end it just got...a little bleak. When that happened, I meant to leave it more open-ended as to whether he dies, and I don't think I accomplished that completely, but I'm hoping that maybe some people are still able to read it that way?


End file.
